Am I a broken record?

Mrs. Bainbridge is having her first linky party and its a fun one! Here's her description:
"We've all got those "things" that we say.  What is something you always say to your students?  Maybe it's something cute that you love... or maybe it's something that you heard them start to say to each other that made you go "uh oh!". "

At first I couldn't even remember the things I usually say in the classroom, it seems like its been ages since summer started (but on the other hand I only have one more month before school starts again and I haven't even touched 1/2 of the things I was supposed to organize this summer!). Luckily, once I read some of the other blogs' posts my memory started coming back, thus proving I am NOT losing my mind as my husband sometimes asserts ;).
Here are a few of my favorite lines:

1. "Get it? Got it? Good!" I always say this after giving directions and my kinders always look at me like I'm crazy for the first few weeks, until they get used to it and then suddenly they start saying it any time I forget!

2. "Is it one of my 5?" I say this and hold up 5 fingers whenever someone looks like they're coming to tattle. It's hilarious to watch them halt midstep and go back to their seat. My five are: someone's bleeding, doing something dangerous, on fire, being stolen by a stranger or throwing up.

3. "Argh! You guys make me feel like I'm herding cats!" Some variation of this is usually said when we have to be somewhere asap and suddenly the whole class has forgotten how to get in a line.

4. Me: "Does he have scissors or a knife?" Student "No...?"  Me:" Then he didn't cut you." My response to a student saying somebody "cut" the line.

5. "Expectation #3..." This goes with the previous saying. We're a Great Expectations school and #3 is "We will use good manners, saying "please", "thank you", and "excuse me" and allow others to go first."

6. "There are no prizes for getting to PE (or music, library etc) first." Sometimes I swear that Mr. Denbow must give out king size Snickers bars to the first student through his door every day, but he swears this isn't the truth so it must be my imagination...

Ok, those are my 6, and 3 of them relate to line problems - guess that's something I need to work on this year!

Side note: one of my darlings had a habit of saying "Huh Mrs. Knopf?" a LOT! She was in my class last year and I retained her, so this year she would often say "I did that (went there, saw that,etc) last year. Huh Mrs. Knopf?" With the "Huh" meaning "Right?" If I didn't answer right away she would just repeat "Huh Mrs. Knopf?" until I affirmed that yes indeed she had done and seen all of this before. It drove me up the wall sometimes.

I teach in a Title I school, high poverty, unstable family situations etc. This child had one of the toughest homelifes. After being her teacher for 1 1/2 years I really loved this child.  I knew I couldn't do anything about her homelife, but I thought that she would always have a safe classroom to come to where she was loved. And then without warning she moved and we didn't even know where. I cried myself to sleep for 5 nights straight, worried about her, and I would have done anything to hear "Huh Mrs. Knopf?" again. Isn't it funny how some things that we find irritating are actually the things we miss the most when they're no longer there?

There is a happy ending though. After about a month I found out that she had stayed in our town instead of moving to OKC and even better she had ended up in a friend's classroom! This friend is a wonderful, caring teacher and had been a tutor at our school the year before and thus knew about my child's home situation etc. I couldn't have asked for a better classroom for her to end up in.

But you know...I still miss her.